


Stonebrook

by SLWalker



Series: Game of Thrones: Alderaan [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Disturbing Themes, Family, Gen, Hope, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Slow recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-07 09:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13432191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: "I'd rather run afoul of trouble doing the right thing," he'd told Bail Antilles, "than drown myself in cynicism by ignoring the wrong one."Bail spends the better part of a year petitioning for Maul's probation, but those are only the first steps of a long journey.





	1. The Stonebrook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowmaat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowmaat/gifts), [B_Radley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/gifts).



> Some disturbing content; namely, public officials being indifferent or worse to a minor and issues of medical consent.

Bail went to Coruscant himself.

The prison complex was a foreboding structure, built as much as a visual warning as it was a functional thing; its rounded outer walls were smooth, defying anyone a foothold should they somehow manage to blind the sensors studded all over it. Entrances and exits were limited; even the emergency exits, in the event of some disaster, were impossible to pick out until they were activated. Over all, it towered as a giant fortress in one of the industrial districts, drab and grim and meant to house the worst of the worst.

Bail remembered feeling mildly ill and claustrophobic the first time he toured it, with Senator Antilles, but oddly standing outside of the front gate waiting for the orders to be processed was even worse.

He couldn't deny he was a little nervous. More than one person had called him naive, including said senator, for thinking that some kindness and stability would have any impact on a hardened killer, no matter how young, but once Bail had this bit in his teeth, he couldn't let it go. Besides, he wasn't so naive that he didn't do his homework; he kept in fairly constant contact with Warden Myles throughout the court petitions, getting updates and leaning on his own status and name recognition to ferret out information. And for as many questions as his parents had for him, they didn't do anything to dissuade him.

"I'd rather run afoul of trouble doing the right thing," he'd told Bail Antilles, "than drown myself in cynicism by ignoring the wrong one."

For the better part of the past year, he had been pushing to get Maul released on probation, with Bail's team of lawyers leaning on every angle they could, from the boy's age when he was convicted to the latest studies of juvenile offenders (often ignored), and four days ago, they had succeeded.

Now, it was time to see if Bail's instincts were right or not.

 

 

 

The first time Bail laid eyes on the zabrak-hybrid, he was instantly struck with a mix of curiosity and horror. Amidst a general population of adult bipedal sentients, Maul looked wildly out of place, not only for his vivid coloration but for how _young_ he was. He was rail-thin, but even then his face had the softness of youth, an impression not undone by the hard black lines on his red skin; combined with his eyes, big and round and bright yellow against the black mask around them, and he seemed-- incredibly breakable.

Or already broken. He was expressionless, a spot of colorful stillness in a large exercise room, his back against a wall. He didn't seem to be focused on anything, didn't even track motion in his field of vision. The rest of the population just moved past him like he was furniture, albeit the kind they gave some space.

"What's a kid doing in the general population?" Bail had asked, voice a little sharper than strictly diplomatic, as they walked in the shielded guard-walk, his eyes locked on the boy.

Warden Myles harrumphed, then answered, "He's a convicted murderer."

Minors committing capital crimes wasn't exactly unheard of by any means, though it was exceptionally rare on Alderaan. Bail fell quiet for a moment absorbing that, a brief war going on in his mind between the heinousness of murder, desire to see justice served, with the fact of the boy's age. "He can't have reached the Age of Responsibility..." he said, a little less certainly.

Myles seemed uncomfortable. "He hasn't. No one knows his age; near as we can tell, he's fifteen."

The fact that the warden knew who the boy was suggested he had reason to. Senator Antilles was eying Bail, but Bail didn't let it go. "How old was he when he was convicted, then?"

There was a long silence, and the discomfort in the air thickened noticably. "Twelve."

When Bail was twelve, he had been concerned with fishing and adventures; he had been lamenting school work and only taking his very first steps into the true responsibilities of a nobleman. He had been irritated with his younger sisters and protective of them at the same time, had begun learning the art and power of negotiation, and he had just _started_ learning that the galaxy outside of Alderaan could be a cruel place.

He couldn't fathom what would ever drive a twelve-year-old to commit murder. He couldn't fathom any system that wouldn't take such a young age into account when sentencing, either.

He managed to bite his tongue for the rest of the tour, much to the relief of both warden and senator. But their relief was short lived; an hour after landing on Alderaan, Bail was making calls and asking questions, leaning on his political acumen and affability to coax out information, a tiny piece at a time.

 

 

 

The boy was labeled _disturbed_.

No one had claimed responsibility for him.

No one came forward as a witness on his behalf.

The public defender barely bothered to argue his case.

He was Force sensitive.

He had no family name, but his given name was _Maul._

And he hadn't spoken in over two years.

 

 

 

He had grown some, from the last time Bail had seen him, but he still hadn't quite shaken off the softer lines of boyhood. He wasn't yet tall enough to reach Bail's chin, and he still looked the kind of thin that didn't sit right on his frame, though he didn't look like he'd been beaten or anything. When the guard walked him out, dressed in the typical prisoner's jumpsuit, he didn't balk or bolt; when the guard stopped him, he stopped and stood, hands cuffed in front of him.

The blank look was just the same; spiritless and empty. Focused on nothing.

While that didn't surprise Bail any, it was only standing there looking at Maul that he started to realize the enormity of the responsibility he had been pushing so hard for.

He ducked his head a little to the side, trying to catch the kid's gaze; oddly, he was kind of heartened that Maul closed his eyes rather than continue to just stare fixed ahead. It was a reaction, and that was something; a fairly informative one, too, though Bail wouldn't be able to sort out his thoughts on things until later.

"Hey, take these off," Bail told the guard, pointing to the cuffs. "I've signed for him already."

The guard was a young guy; behind his face shield, he looked more than a little wary about the prospect. "Not sure that's such a good idea, sir. This one has a history."

"He's on _probation_ ," Bail answered, firmly though quietly, not looking away from the guard. "This isn't just a transfer to some other prison."

Bail was aware that he was taller than most humans and those in a similar species subset, but normally he kept his posture loose and relaxed in order to minimize it. Now, he squared his shoulders under his leather coat, straightening his spine and looking down his nose to the guard. It was a look well-cultivated to gain compliance.

And it did. The guard still didn't look happy, but he tapped the remote on his belt unlocking the cuffs, and then reached out and pulled them off of Maul's wrists before hooking them to his belt. "All yours, sir," he said, turning and heading back to the gate, shaking his head.

Maul let his hands fall loose to his sides. Bail knew better than to really expect a response, but he still introduced himself. "Hey. My name's Bail. Let's get out of here."

 

 

 

When the boy was jumped by an inmate with a hidden knife, he had thrown the inmate down a hallway, sending the human male into a wall with such force that it broke the man's neck and left him permanently paralyzed, spine destroyed to such a degree that even modern medical technology couldn't give him back his mobility.

He never used his hands to do it.

By the time they managed to stun-bolt the boy into oblivion, two guards and four more inmates were seriously wounded. His midichlorian levels were tested, a Jedi observer was brought in, but between the wounded guards and the wounded inmates, their petition for custody was turned down.

The boy was labelled as _dangerous_ and _combative_. He was isolated and kept sedated most of the time.

He only weighed in at just over thirty-six kilos at that point.

 

 

 

Bail knew he was taking risks. It wasn't unheard of for people, even really young people, to be so damaged and mentally ill that they remained a constant danger throughout their lives. On Alderaan, such people were handled by the medical community; those who, thanks to damage either physical or psychological, couldn't even be left unattended, let alone released to live in the wider society. They lived as full a lives as could be given to them, but for their sakes and for society's, those lives were tightly supervised.

But Alderaan was one of the exceptions to the rule; on most worlds, people afflicted such were incarcerated or worse.

If that turned out to be the case, Bail still thought Maul would be better off on a world enlightened enough to treat even the severely disturbed with dignity.

The thing was, though-- Bail had a feeling that wasn't the case.

The trip back to Alderaan was just as quiet; Bail talked a little, but he didn't try to force it. Whenever something came to mind, he just spoke it, and he didn't push for any kind of an answer. Sitting in the padded seat of one of House Organa's fine couriers in a prison jumpsuit, Maul just looked out the window, hands in his lap, wrists close enough together to accommodate a pair of cuffs he wasn't wearing; he didn't really give any indication that he heard Bail, but Bail didn't let that deter him.

He had timed it such that they would arrive on the Estate in the early evening; his sisters were curious and he knew his parents wanted to lay eyes on their new ward, but Bail figured that even if Maul wasn't _reacting_ to much, he was probably at least peripherally aware of it, and he didn't think overwhelming the kid on his first night out of prison was going to be doing him any favors.

Celly had moved out of the suite next to Bail's two years before, and in anticipation of it having a new occupant, Bail had spent the last four days since word came back that he'd been granted his petition making sure that it was suitable. Done in muted colors, and none of them gray or green, it was a hell of a lot bigger than a prison cell and a hell of a lot better appointed, with a private 'fresher and its own sitting area with a wide bank of windows over the Estate's vast gardens.

"So, this is yours now," he said, standing in the door, leaning against the frame. There were conditions on Maul's probation; the ankle-tracker, for instance, and a dozen different _recommendations_ , most of which were demeaning, that were sent along. But Bail had drawn the line at locking Maul in and then stood at it without budging, no matter how supposedly reasonable it was.

Maybe it was all a risk. And maybe he would pay for it. But what Bail held onto was the faith that he wouldn't.

And that something good was going to come out of this.

"My room's the next door down," he said, just looking at the kid standing there like a statue carved of confusion and despondency. "If you need anything or want anything, you can just come get me, I'll be in all night. If you wake me up, it's okay. I don't mind."

It turned out that there didn't need to be a physical lock on the outside of the door, because there was a hell of a solid _mental_ one left in Maul's head.

 

 

 

The first time they pulled the kid into the prison infirmary to use Omega-66 on him, he'd fought like a wildcat, albeit a fairly heavily doped one.

The second time they did, he'd planted his heels and once he was dragged through the doors, he'd shattered into tears, begging desperately that they _don't_. That was when he was labelled _manipulative_.

That was also the last time anyone there heard his voice. The third time, he didn't fight, didn't cry, didn't speak. And that was when he got his final label of _disturbed_.

 

 

 

"I don't remember-- most of it. Those years, when I was there," Maul would say, years later. "They're just gone. I was small and then I wasn't."

Then he would change the topic, deftly but firmly, to something else.

Bail believed him -- Maul was honest almost to a fault -- but not remembering it didn't take away the nightmares that sometimes shattered his sleep anyway.

 

 

 

"When I was young," Mazi said, and then promptly swatted Bail on the back of his shoulder when he couldn't resist smirking, "oh, stop that. As I was saying, when I was young, I would go out playing with a boy. His name was Dailin, and his father was quite some hunter, one of those sorts who liked to hang dead animals on the wall and had a large collection of them, from all over the galaxy. Dailin was a more gentle soul, though; I think he would have preferred to have taken holos, rather than taken heads."

Mazicia had come to motherhood very late; she was almost forty when she had Bail, and then she gave birth to three daughters spaced out over the following decade. Now, just shy of seventy, the more recent years had not been kind to her; her brother -- Bail's uncle Tayvor -- had been murdered over a labor dispute just two years ago. Tayvor had been the baby of that generation of House Mandirly; he was only twenty years older than Bail, in fact, and Bail had many memories of the man carrying him about on his shoulders, making him laugh as a little boy.

He, too, had been a gentle soul. When his murderers received only a fine, the stunned anger left in the wake had still not dissipated entirely.

It had devastated House Mandirly and it had broken many hearts in House Organa, as well. Mazi had gotten very quiet, to the point where everyone worried for her health, though she continued to run the household and its many interests well regardless of her heartsickness for the loss of the man who had been her brother and who she had half-raised when their mother died young and unexpectedly.

But of all of Bail's family, she was the one who hushed the nervous questions about Maul; the one who sent him for a proper check-up from the family doctor because she didn't trust the prison's reports, and the one who was willing to extend to this lost kid the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, Bail wondered what she was thinking when she did that. Sometimes, the weight of her trust in him was almost more than he could stand.

"Still, he wanted to impress his father and so he shot at targets and practiced. He asked me to go hunting with him; I had no interest in killing animals, but he was my friend and I didn't actually think he was going to bag anything." Mazi took a sip of her tea, quirking her eyebrows. "We traipsed through the woods and set up a truly rickety stand to hide in. He sat waiting, and since I was reasonably bored by all of this farce, I just read a novel on my datapad. It was a fine day for it, anyway."

It was rare these days when Bail's mother told stories; while she did, it was easy to remember how bright a presence she had been before losing her baby brother.

"As luck -- ill-luck, ultimately -- would have it, Dailin got a chance to prove his hunting chops. While I was reading about Lady Karash bravely leading her troops to liberate a colony world, an appropriately young buck in his first velvet happened through. Dailin jumped up and took his shot, and being inexperienced and unsteady, he blew the poor thing's left front leg clean off."

Bail actually recoiled and gaped, horrified; he had suspected this was likely an unhappy story, but he hadn't expected _that_.

Mazi saw his expression and reached over, stroking the shoulder she had swatted earlier, soothing. But she didn't stop telling the tale. "Dailin, of course, was struck silent in horror by it. As was I. The boy dropped his rifle and started shaking and crying, but in the meantime, that deer was laying there stunned, bleeding his life out onto the ground. I don't know what I thought I would be able to do; perhaps I had some fanciful idea that I could comfort him or save him, though I was old enough by then that reality lived just beneath of my wishful thinking. Still, I walked over there with the thought of doing _something_.

"The buck, though, didn't know what was going on; all he knew was that he was in grave danger. He kept trying to get up as if he still had all four legs, and I've never forgotten that-- _incomprehension_ , the way he couldn't seem to understand why he wasn't able to get up and get away from this thing which was going to hurt him worse. He tried to kick me when I got too close, and I realized that there was nothing I was going to be able to do. Dailin was too traumatized to act, so in something of a daze, I went and picked up the rifle myself. By the time I made it back, the deer had stopped struggling; he was just laying there shaking. I think he was beyond our world by then, really; maybe shock, maybe blood loss. Maybe just resignation."

Later, Bail would be able to catch some of the lessons his mother was imparting to him, but right then, he was too shaken to do so.

How clearly he could visualize this didn't help.

"Did you--?" he asked, after a moment.

Mazi nodded, pressing her mouth into a line. "I did," she just said, finally. Then there was a long moment, before she added, "Maul has that look about him; as if he has one foot on the other side of beyond and is waiting."

Half a dozen broken thoughts ran through Bail's mind -- including the genuinely absurd notion that his mother was suggesting _he_ pick up a rifle, even though he knew better -- but he didn't honestly know how to say any of them.

But his mother shook her head, then, and forced a half-smile. "Do what you can for him, darling, and I'll make sure this House backs you in the endeavor. Let's see if we can draw this story to a happier conclusion."

Bail never went hunting again after that.

 

 

 

Maul lived on the prison's schedule for about two months; he would wake up at the same time and wait for Bail to come and get him. Even though his door was unlocked, he wouldn't walk through it without prompting. He would eat whatever was put down for him at breakfast -- usually quite a bit, high in protein and calcium, trying to make up for the deficiencies he suffered in prison -- and then he would go back to his room unless Bail nudged him into doing something else. The first time Bail managed to even get eye contact with the kid was by throwing that schedule off by about twenty minutes; even though it was a look of muted confusion and anxiety, Bail took it as a victory, because at least it was _something_.

Doctor Frayus said that a schedule wasn't necessarily a _bad_  thing; it was the lack of spontaneity and initiative that was more worrisome. The official diagnosis, arrived at after a month or so of observations and a thorough read of prison records, was _atypical catatonic depression_ , likely born of trauma. Apparently, it was extremely uncommon but not entirely unheard of. Unlike a label, that was actually somewhat useful to know.

"Given what they did to him in prison," and Frayus had some very strong opinions on that; Bail was still kind of taken aback at how _loudly pissed off_ the old doctor was by what he considered barbaric treatment not only while Maul was in prison but before it, "I wouldn't try any of the treatments there are for it, either. Unless something changes and he starts acting dangerously, I would suggest you just keep doing what you're doing and give him time."

Time, they had. As the days slid by, everyone in the household was getting used to their phantom.

So, on days when Bail wasn't working, he stayed with Maul through most of the day, usually taking him to the Estate's library or exercise room, and after lunch, they would take a long walk (it took Bail about three weeks to get Maul to walk _beside_  him and not in front of him, as if he was the new prison guard), and then come back for awhile, and then dinner. After dinner, Maul usually stayed in his room; like clockwork, he would shower and change into sleep clothes and then lay down.

Bail researched the hell out of catatonic depression, but it really _was_ rare and there were only a handful of treatments, all of which involved either drugs or electricity, and neither of those were even close to an option unless Maul could actually ask for them. That left Bail with the more mundane kinds of things to work with, the usual things suggested for more common depression, like self-care and exercise.

So, he talked and didn't let the returned silence put him off. And he took them on long rambling strolls through the Estate's walks and gardens, sometimes pointing out a bird or a tree.

The weather was cold, but it was really outside that he got the first inkling that there was some kind of processing going on behind those otherwise blank yellow eyes, at least beyond the rare, fleeting eye contact. Before that, he _knew_ Maul was absorbing enough to learn his way around; to adapt to the new environment enough to navigate it without being led by an arm, but all of that had seemed to take place on some subsurface level.

It was while they were walking by the Stonebrook -- a creek which ran through the heart of the Organa Estate, a tributary to the Triplehorn River that fed into Aldera Lake -- and Bail was talking about a business deal he was working on that he noticed they had somehow come to a stop.

It wasn't much, but Maul had his eyes closed and his head tipped a little bit, and it was pretty clear he was listening to the creek, not yet frozen over, as it whispered and chuckled and babbled on its way to the river.

Bail stood there until his nose went numb, fallen silent, not wanting to break into whatever it was that Maul was listening for.

 

 

 

"Didn't you ever get tired? Or-- I don't know, bored?" Maul would ask, years later, after the obligatory moment of silence had passed for the fact the topic had come up in the first place.

Bail would tilt his head and look down, smiling as he absently chipped a stray bit of paint still sticking to one of Maul's horns off, as Maul used his lap as a pillow. "No, never."

 

 

 

They were all small things, but small things were better than nothing, and to Bail, they were all kind of like a gift.

When it was too bitterly cold out, as the seasonal winter winds flowed down out of the mountains, they sat inside in the solarium with tea. Outside, ruffled birds huddled around feeders, drab browns and blacks and sometimes bright bits of blue or red or gold against the white backdrop; Bail would name the ones he knew and Maul would watch them, tracking them as they took off after a squabble. One day, instead of waiting behind his door for Bail, Maul was waiting in front of it. A handful of weeks later, he was wandering the halls at night; still a ghost, but one who wasn't waiting to be led around constantly, though he still shadowed Bail during the daylight hours. The prison-schedule fell apart; sometimes something must have hit him wrong and he'd fall back into it for awhile, but it was still mostly forward progress.

There were times when Bail would be talking about something and he'd noticed he was being watched. He was always pretty careful not to make anything of it, though he wasn't ever able to resist flashing a grin at it.

Maul still didn't talk and he still spent most of the time seemingly lost in his own mind, but life in House Organa was doing him good, however slowly. He lost the too-lean look he'd had before, filling out some; he also lost the ragged horns that had been cut blunt in prison and the new set was startling for how much better they looked, even if they resulted in a lot of torn shirts at first. The top of his head was now a fraction above Bail's chin and his movements were less mechanical, more fluid. He stopped looking like a terribly broken boy and started looking like a less-fragile, if still mute, young adult.

When spring came, his wanderlust apparently increased; that was when Bail had to start tracking him down for breakfast. His mother had started to petition to have the ankle tracker taken off; while Maul was still something of a mystery, no one thought he was going to suddenly turn on them now and he had made no move to leave the property.

Bail was the only person on the Estate he didn't actively avoid, for that matter; he edged away from everyone else as if he was expecting to be burned.

Bail got pretty good at finding him; sometimes he brought breakfast in a basket, sometimes he just gave Maul a nudge to come back inside long enough to eat. Maul had his spots that he kept returning to; the bank of ancient evergreens at the edge of the vast property. Or the overshadowed walk between the kitchen and verandas, where dusky wine-grapes ripened later in summer.

But his favorite spot seemed to be the Stonebrook. It quickly became the first place Bail went to, and about three quarters of the time he'd find Maul there, sitting on one of the rocks on the bank, in the dappled sunlight through leaves that started spring green and turned darker as the season wore on to summer.

"Your uncle used to sit by the stream at the edge of our property," Mazi said, smiling a little as she looked out to where Maul was barely visible; the play of light and shadow across his markings made Bail think that he'd probably disappear in natural camouflage in the right kind of environment. "He would spend hours there, just watching the water," she added, softly.

It was the first time since Tayvor's death that his mother had spoken of him without the wounded note of bitterness under the edge of her voice.

Even though they spent less time together, Bail still made time to find Maul every day; no matter how busy he got, it was something he never failed to do. Things had been fairly static the past month or so; not much change, except in the world around them. Even if it went no further than that, though, Bail still considered it a victory; even if their ghost just stayed a ghost who listened to the creek and watched the birds, he was still better off there than he would have ever been in that prison.

Not to say that Bail ever gave up hope. The thought never even occurred to.

He headed out there, making sure to walk and scrub the grass enough with his feet that Maul could hear him coming, and plunked himself down on an adjacent rock. Maul turned his head a little, an acknowledgement Bail had gotten used to and was pleased with, then went back to watching the creek chase itself along towards the river.

It wasn't _peace_ , but it wasn't misery, either.

"How are you feeling?" Bail asked, as he always did, light and unassuming and without any real expectation of an answer.

Even then, he could still feel a charge in the air, almost like static electricity before Maul answered, quietly, "I don't know."

He had a low voice, baritone; soft-toned, though there was a rusty quality to it, probably from disuse. He didn't look over to say it, but his brow knitted a little bit, almost like he was worried.

Bail's heart hit the inside of his rib-cage so hard that he had to swallow down the startled gasp that he wanted to give. Instead, he managed to give a calm nod back, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't entirely smother the smile that followed.

"That's okay," he said, heart a'flight. "I'm just glad you're here to figure that out."


	2. The Birds in the East

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this was hard to write and at a time when my self-confidence isn't so great, so feedback would be greatly appreciated and detailed feedback will probably make me cry and tuck it away to re-read a thousand times.

"Why am I here?" came first.

"What am I here _for_?" came second.

Bail had no real answer to either of those questions. He tried to explain that Maul was here because he didn't deserve to be stuck, drugged or Force-blinded, in a prison with a large number of adult convicts, without even having had a proper trial, which should have been answer enough for that first question. And Maul wasn't here _for_ anything, unless one could define anything as recovering and being given a chance at a life.

But even though all of that was true, he could see it bounce off, could see Maul fail utterly to grasp it. He'd just stare at Bail in abject confusion, hints of desperation in the wideness of his eyes, waiting for some kind of an answer he could actually understand, and then when he didn't get one, he'd pace. Or go back to his room.

The longer Bail couldn't give him an answer, the more worried, it seemed, Maul got. Once he'd spoken for the first time, it was like all of the walls that had been built in prison started falling; he still drifted occasionally, still seemingly stopped registering the world around him, but he made eye contact much more reliably now. He rarely spoke -- a good day would net a sentence or two, often halting -- but he would nod or shake his head when asked questions that could be answered that way. He was still something of a ghost, still avoided everyone on the Estate -- except for Bail -- but at least it now seemed a conscious choice instead of some instinctive fear of being hurt.  
  
Frayus's investigation into Maul's background prior to arrest was a dead end, but for one thing: He was genetically a zabrak-human hybrid, but upon a polite query to Iridonia about possible genetic testing and maybe finding if Maul had any blood family out there, the doctor was informed rather stiffly that, given his color and markings, Maul was likely from a planet called Dathomir and was probably born a Nightbrother. Whatever that meant, they weren't very forthcoming about it, only that it meant he wouldn't have family on Iridonia.

Dathomir was so backwater Bail had never even heard of it; he had to look it up. Even then, he didn't find out anything about Nightbrothers, but he did eventually manage to find out about a group called the Nightsisters; further query there ended up with learning that they were largely human witches and apparently Force users. (He noted that Dathomir was under a red sun, though; when he realized that, he had ended up smiling. Even without confirmation, those striking black markings probably _were_ camouflage in that kind of lighting.)

Having found nothing more, at least with the resources that Bail had available to him, he just turned his attention back to the present, and the young near-adult he had assumed responsibility for.

It had been about three weeks since that first real engagement on the shore of the Stonebrook; summer was in full swing, the world bright with it and sweet smelling from the flowers in the gardens. If anyone would have told Bail he would be knocked on his ass with an explosion of pain and stars, mostly centered in his right eye, he wouldn't have believed such a thing could happen on his own home ground, on such a beautiful day.

Later, though not much later, he would reflect that putting a hand on someone in the midst of a full-blown panic attack, especially when you were that much bigger than them, was one of his more boneheaded moves.

Shortly thereafter that reflection was an honest appreciation for the fact that Maul had one hell of a left hook.

He was glad that the bacta patch had a chance to work on his eye -- enough for him to actually open it -- before he had to explain to his parents what had happened.

 

 

 

The thing was, Bail really _didn't_ ever feel bored. Or tired. Or burned-out. Everyone wisely pointed out that caretaker fatigue was a real thing, and Bail knew that, he even knew to watch for it, but he just didn't feel it. He knew no one would have blamed him if he had, nor would he dream of blaming anyone else if they did, but it never manifested. Where Maul was concerned, Bail had an infinite well-spring of patience and good will. It was effortless; as easy as breathing.

After giving Bail quite a shiner, Maul had disappeared back to his room and Bail didn't chase him down, figuring that the only way Maul was going to grasp boundaries for himself would be by actually having ones to cross. And since he didn't seem to quite _get_ putting them into place, the physical representation of a door would do in the interim; one he wasn't locked behind unless he wanted to be locked behind it, one he could hide behind if he needed to. A safe space that belonged to him.

Bail just waited; laid on his own bed with a bacta patch against his eye, working it all over in his mind. He wasn't actually surprised by any of it; he thought, given all that Maul had survived thus far, and only somewhere in his sixteenth year, the damage left was going to show itself in any number of ways. Even without having to be told, he knew he hadn't been hit because of malice, but because he'd seemed like a looming threat of harm.

He went to dinner, explained to his worried parents, and then came back and chimed Maul's door. If he got an answer, that was fine; if he didn't, he'd try again later. Once the prison-schedule had fallen apart, Maul would forget to eat sometimes, unless he was reminded, and Bail had gotten into the habit of doing the reminding.

When the first chime went unanswered, he tried a second.

He had just given up, not wanting to push it by chiming a third time, and was headed down to his own door when Maul's opened.

Maul looked wretched, in the purest sense of the word; not so much in his actual appearance, but in the look on his face and the way he was rubbing at his wrists compulsively; even standing a handful of paces away, Bail could see him trembling.

"Hey," Bail said, heart aching for that look. "Figured I'd remind you to get some dinner. The kitchen staff made a plate for you, it's in the usual cupboard."

"I'm sorry," Maul said back, barely loud enough to be heard; when he chanced a glance up and saw Bail's shiner, he went from looking miserable to looking both miserable _and_ ill before dropping his gaze again.

Bail shook his head, despite knowing it wouldn't be seen. "It's okay. I've done worse to myself just being clumsy. I'm not angry."

That didn't seem to make Maul feel any better; he didn't look up when he said, frighteningly earnest, "You could hit me back."

It wasn't easy to keep the horror Bail felt off of his face at that -- both the words and that it almost seemed like a genuine _request_ \-- but after a few seconds, he managed to swallow it down enough to keep his voice even and quiet, calm. "That's never going to happen. It's not-- this isn't some kind of awful trade; it wouldn't make me feel better to do it -- just the opposite, actually -- and it wouldn't do you any good, either."

Bail didn't ever feel tired or burned-out, but there were times he did wish he knew what to say; wished he knew how to find whatever combination of words it was that would untangle the disaster that was that kid's understanding of-- pretty much anything. Maul had no answer to that; he just looked tired and desperately lost, clearly unable to believe that Bail meant it, just as clearly trapped by the fact that Bail wouldn't even get angry, let alone raise a hand to him.

Bail thought about it for a few more moments, as the silence in the air became oppressive. Then, he took a slow breath in and let it out with a quiet whoosh before saying, "You know, when I was around your age -- give or take a handful of months -- I borrowed my Dad's landspeeder without permission. I didn't even have my full license yet, just the provisional one, but I thought I could get to my then-girlfriend's place in time to, uh-- well, frankly, have sex and then get back before Dad even noticed it was gone."

Given the way Maul's brow knit at this, even if his head was still down, it was pretty clear he was listening. And maybe trying to figure out the relevance. Or even whether it made sense at all.

"Not only did I not make it back in time, but _her_ father got in early from the trip he had been on and walked in on us liberally making use of the family room's couch, completely naked, mid--" Bail cleared his throat, feeling his face heat. "Anyway, the point is, we got into trouble, though it was more for the lying and sneaking and not keeping it private than because we were having sex in the first place. I had to do the drive-of-shame, right home, to be met by my father in the garage. He was disappointed in me, as well he should have been; I was right in the middle of my long-haired teenage rebel phase, but I've always really hated disappointing my parents, even then. Know what he did?" When Maul shook his head, a bit tentatively, Bail smiled some and finished, "He took away my provisional license and made me wash every speeder in the garage, by hand, for the rest of summer. He didn't yell at me, he didn't hit me, he just made sure I had plenty of time to think about what I'd done and how I'd broken his trust, and that was after I had _deliberately_ chosen to do the wrong thing. Were you deliberately trying to hurt me?"

Maul shook his head again.

"Then what's the point of punishing you at all, let alone hitting you?" Bail asked.

It seemed Maul couldn't figure out an answer to that question, either. He wavered a little in place, as if suddenly exhausted, shoulders slumped. Then he passed a hand across his face and turned back to go back into his room.

Bail closed his eyes for a moment, took another breath, and held onto the fact that Maul didn't need permission to retreat as being the small victory that it was.

 

 

 

"I was thinking of hiring Bizzy," Bail's mother said, as she pulled her reading glasses down from where they were nested in her hair, resting them on the bridge of her nose as she took the datapad Bail had brought her with the returns from the vineyard's latest contract, one they'd signed a month ago with a high end restaurant group on Coruscant.

Bail raised an eyebrow, a half-smile tugging on his mouth at the thought of his old tutor. "She must be a hundred years old. Why?"

Mazi raised her own eyebrow right back, looking up at him over the top of her glasses. "Listen to you, being impudent. She isn't that old; she's only fifteen years older than I am."

"Right." Bail failed to chew down his smirk, and also failed to dodge the light backhanded swat his mother gave his belly. "Okay, she's more like a finely aged wine, but isn't she retired?"

"She managed to wrangle you _and_ your sisters, and a more diverse and challenging group of brats she couldn't have asked for; if that wasn't enough to get her to retire, I doubt any students since then have succeeded in driving her there." Mazi went back to looking over the pad, but Bail's heart was incredibly warm for the animation in his mother's face; the brightness in her eyes as she took shots at him. "I highly doubt they looked after Maul's education in prison. He'll need caught up if he's ever going to go to University."

Bail tried to picture their ghost in a lecture hall and failed utterly; he also failed to imagine how Maul would react to having a tutor. Bizzy Jessep was a tiny woman -- the top of her snow white head only came up to Bail's sternum now -- and Bail would be lying if he tried to claim he wasn't worried what kind of damage Maul could accidentally do to the old teacher if he happened to panic and lash out at the wrong time.

After observing three more of those panic attacks, Bail had long since figured out that Maul had no idea where he was when they happened, let alone who he was with. They seemed to build up on the kid's ever-present anxiety; piled up against a constant state of wired tension that waxed and waned, but never left entirely, and then like a rope snapping, something would send him back and he would be cowering in a corner or against a wall, making himself as small as possible, and trying to drag enough air into his lungs to keep up with the need for it, shaking so hard his teeth were rattling. It was awful watching it; wanting to reach out and soothe away that terror, but knowing that doing so would just provoke some kind of swift, brutal and overwhelming measure of self-defense.

Bail just backed off after that first time, though he refused to leave Maul there like that, alone in that state; instead of reaching out, as he all but ached to, he stayed well back and tried to remind Maul that he wasn't wherever he thought he was, that he was safe, that no one was going to hurt him.

He didn't know if the words did any good. Even after the dissociation was past, Maul just seemed more exhausted -- even still clearly anxious -- than anywhere in the realm of _calm_. Often, it was a mystery what had set it off in the first place; whether it was a sight or a sound or even just the wrong thought at the wrong time. From the outside, to Bail, it didn't seem-- random, exactly, there were usually signs that Maul was more keyed up than usual, but the actual triggers were invisible, or too subtle for Bail to perceive.

"I'd say it's probably overdue," Frayus had said, looking at Bail from across his desk, on one of the routine weekly visits Bail made -- now without Maul, who looked terrorized at the mere mention of going somewhere that wasn't on the Estate -- after being updated. "Near as I could tell, they punished him for defending himself, then they punished him for reacting like the frightened child he was at the time, until he finally just shut down. He never had a chance to process it then, so he's doing it now."

Bail had spent a  _lot_ of time the past month reading about trauma, the reactions to it and the ways people recovered from it. The doctor's words weren't a revelation, he knew most of this already, but it helped to have someone as a sounding board. "I wish I knew how to tell him that it isn't going to happen here," he had admitted, even knowing that mental health didn't work that way. "I mean, in a way he gets. It just bounces off, he looks at me like I'm speaking Shyriiwook."

"You can't. You can just keep showing it, and eventually he'll figure it out for himself." Frayus shook his head. "Look at it like this: At least he feels safe enough to fall apart now. You're doing all of the right things, Bail. Keep doing them and hoping."

That was easy enough. It hurt to watch, it hurt not to be able to just-- fix it, and make it so that Maul didn't have to suffer through it, especially since the point of getting him out of that wretched place was so that he _wouldn't_ have to suffer anymore, but for all that Bail wanted to, he could see pretty easily where the wrong step would destroy the fragile progress being made.

The idea of a tutor, though--

Bail ticked it over in his mind some; after a few moments watching him, his mother went back to the datapad and left him to stand there working the idea over. He _was_ worried that Maul could hurt Bizzy and end up knocking himself a thousand steps backwards in recovery at the same time, but on the other hand, maybe having something more concrete to focus on would give Maul a break from the tangled-up mess in his head. Bail couldn't yet conceive of a future where Maul was capable of going to University -- or even sitting down to dinner with the family, for that matter -- but clearly Mazi could.

There was something to the idea that maybe investing some hope in a yet-nonexistent future would allow it to become real.

"Okay. See if Bizzy's still available and interested in teaching, and I'll see if Maul's willing to try it," he finally said; it was going to be a delicate line to walk between offering the education and making sure Maul didn't take it as an imperative or requirement, but Bail felt ready to walk it.

"I'll let you know within the hour," Mazi answered, not looking up; the smile that curved her lips, though, had Bail smiling just the same.

 

 

 

Maul still tended to wander. He got less drifty and more furtive about it, as if he had to steal it -- even though no one on the Estate made so much as a move to stop him -- and he did most of his roaming in the night hours, but Bail was still pretty good at working out where he would be. Maul no longer shadowed Bail during the day (and Bail sometimes missed that, even if it did seem like its own kind of progress, he missed the company); instead, he usually stayed in that wing of the Estate, only going out long enough to get food and bring it back to his room, and then to return the plates. Bail had no idea when he was sleeping -- and had a feeling Maul probably _wasn't_ enough, though it was hard to tell because his mask hid any bruised look he'd have about the eyes to give him away -- but at least he was eating more often than not.

Bail figured that it was a good thing that Maul was taking initiative on getting food when he remembered to. And that he wasn't waiting for someone to tell him to. It was sad that he thought he had to sneak it back to his room, but that he kept going back there as a place he knew was safe for him was still a step forward.

Today, though, he was in the exercise room on the Estate.

All of the equipment had been pushed out of the way, and there weren't any floor mats down. Even from the door, Bail could see the dark bruises mottling the red parts of Maul's skin, on his shoulders, what wasn't covered by markings or the sleeveless undershirt.

He went to offer a greeting when Maul took a run at the _wall_ , teeth bared; Bail's mouth was already open, but his eyes went wide, and just before it seemed like Maul was going to bounce himself off of it, he kicked off of the ground, ran a good four paces  _up said kriffing wall_ , then kicked off of it into a backflip.

The move was impressive as hell, but even Bail could see the angle had been wrong; Maul managed to twist like a cat in the air before slamming down on his shoulder instead of his neck or head, and the sound of his body hitting the hard floor made Bail instantly queasy.

He wanted to ask how long Maul had been doing this to himself; he knew that self-harm was a possibility with trauma and abuse victims and he'd been keeping an eye out for their ghost in that regard, but before Bail could speak up, Maul picked himself up on trembling arms and got his legs under him, sitting there a moment, clearly exhausted, before saying, "I used to be able to do this."

It was the first time he'd ever spoken without being spoken to first, and the disgust in his voice was new, too, though the undertone of misery wasn't. Bail frowned and stepped in from where he had been lingering in the door, though he didn't drift too close yet. In that moment, he would have given anything to be able to just read Maul's mind and figure out what could possibly be going through that horned head, and maybe then he could figure out what it would take to disarm it. "How long have you been trying?" he asked, carefully conversational.

Maul shook his head; an _I don't know_ rather than a denial. Then he looked at the wall and when he spoke again, there was a sharp, broken edge on his voice, "I don't know what to do. Nothing fits anymore, nothing works right. Why am I here? What am I here _for_?"

That tone made Bail's throat ache, and he paused to grab the first aid kit before finally making his way over there, sitting down crosslegged close enough to reach, but back far enough to not be imposing. "I wish I knew what to tell you," he said, honestly. "You're not really here _for_ anything. I don't have-- I don't have any grand plans for you, I don't have any-- any kind of intentions, or anything, I just-- I'm  _glad_ you're here."

This time, it seemed that the words actually landed; Bail could hear the quiver in Maul's voice when he said, "I hit you," but he could also see that for once, his answer -- even being a non-answer -- didn't just wing off for parts unknown.

"Yeah," Bail answered, his own eyes stinging pretty hard, "but I'm still really glad you're here."

Maul didn't have any response to that, but to draw his knees up and cover his eyes with his hand, overwrought and probably overwhelmed both as he let Bail wrap the self-heating bacta infused muscle patches around his shoulders.

 

 

 

Even though Bizzy remained as tiny and frail-looking as ever, Maul still pressed back against the hand that Bail had rested light between his shoulders -- support, not restriction -- and Bail could feel the jolt of surprise even though Maul had _known_ that she would be in the library waiting for them.

"Shh, it's okay," he said, softly, though he was ready to apologize to Bizzy if her new student bolted away. So far as Bail knew, this was the first time since even coming to Alderaan not quite a year prior that Maul had been confronted with interacting with someone beyond he himself; he didn't quite know why he was the exception to that rule, but he did know that it couldn't be easy. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

Bringing up education hadn't actually been that hard; for as much a mess as Maul was, Bail could see a curiosity spark in his eyes when Bail explained about having a tutor, which was another first. Of course, then came Bail having to explain that an educational assessment wasn't a test, because when he brought that part up, Maul instantly turned wary and anxious all over again.

"What if I fail?"

"It's an assessment, you can't fail," Bail had explained. "The only point is to figure out what you know versus what you don't so you can get caught up and get your gen-ed; if you get that, you'll be eligible for University, here or anywhere in this system."

Maul had stared back at him so doubtfully that Bail was left wondering what about his explanation was that worrisome. Or if maybe Maul couldn't conceive of the idea of going to University himself.

"You don't have to go," Bail added; he definitely wasn't going to drag Maul into it. "It's up to you."

He wasn't sure how to read the expression he got back -- hints of desperation again -- but after Maul paced back and forth a couple dozen times, he finally said, "All right. I'll-- I'll go. But what if--" He stopped, then paced again, then stopped again and just gestured towards Bail's face, brow drawn up.

Bail was ready for that one, too. "If you start to feel really wound up or anxious or upset, just walk out. Bizzy won't chase you and she won't get angry with you."

He didn't know if that was enough, but it seemed to make Maul feel better; he still looked incredibly nervous, but he nodded and at least stopped pacing.

Now, as Maul was standing in the doorway of the library wired for flight, Bail was prepared for this to end, possibly permanently, in a retreat.

"If Bail's been feeding you stories about what a beast I am, I'll have you know they're all lies and damned lies," Bizzy said, sitting in one of the soft chairs with some datapads spread on the reading table in front of her. "It was his own fault he had to spend his summer redoing his work because he was far too busy worrying about his fishing."

Maul was still pressed back against Bail's hand, but Bail had to chew down a grin at the completely baffled expression that crossed his face. "All I've told him is that you're a really good teacher," Bail said as he looked back to Bizzy, a verbal peace offering, even though it was all in jest.

Bail knew his mother had filled Bizzy in on enough of Maul's background to effectively be able to handle him; after lamenting that the Antilles girl wasn't on Alderaan currently -- apparently, she had specialized in teaching trauma survivors -- Bizzy had quite readily agreed to bring House Organa's ghost up to speed. Now, she snorted back at Bail. "You don't need to butter me up for extra credit anymore, boy."

"That was genuine appreciation for your extraordinary patience." Bail sniffed, playing up his own offense. "I'm wounded by the implication that I would ever try to 'butter' you in any way, shape or form."

The tutor raised one sculpted eyebrow very, very high. "I'll just bet you are."

When the way that could be taken finally hit Bail, his face went hot and he gaped a moment before breaking out into a laugh, kind of mortified and kind of amused at once.

All through that Maul had watched between them, wide-eyed, but when Bail managed to get his own immature giggling out of the way and offer back a sheepish grin, he was kind of surprised by the look he was on the other end of; by the interest and the diminished level of anxiety in those bright yellow eyes. "Sorry about that," he said, passing his hand across Maul's back automatically, kind of thrilled by some of the tension being gone. "Do you want to stay? I promise not to say anything else horribly embarrassing."

After another long beat of staring at him, Maul looked back at Bizzy and finally nodded.

 

 

 

"Very strong on math and the sciences; his reading comprehension is fine, too, but he's in terrible shape on the creativity front. He struggled quite a bit over interpreting fiction and philosophy, and he was somewhat weak on civics, as well. But he's very smart, Bail, it won't take much actual work to catch him up."

It had taken Bizzy about three hours to get a good idea of Maul's educational background; by the time she was done, it had clearly been hard on Maul, because he had all but bolted out of the library and presumably back to his room. Still, he hadn't ended up dissociating while actually doing the assessment and he had apparently gotten up at one point to pace around the back stacks of the library, only to come back to finish it up, instead of leaving altogether.

Bail wasn't surprised by that assessment, either. Beyond the fact that it seemed to fit, he didn't tend to project any expectations onto Maul anyway, so every new thing he learned was just another thing to add to his growing understanding of their charge.

"I would start with two days a week, no more than two hours a day; he can study independently otherwise," Bizzy said, and then her expression went rueful. "That poor little duck. He looked terribly upset with himself when he knew he got something wrong; I've seen that look before, though not quite so bad as that."

"Think we should hold off on this?" Bail asked; the last thing Maul needed was to feel like he was under any kind of pressure to succeed at something, especially when it was all remedial anyway.

Bizzy shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I'll just adjust my style and hopefully keep him focused on learning for the sake of learning, rather than making it pass or fail."

"Shame you couldn't do that for me when I was under your thumb," Bail said back, wrinkling his nose a little playfully, once he'd nodded his agreement for that.

"You needed the challenge, you whelp," Bizzy answered, but she was grinning when she said it. "He, on the other hand, only needs patience and kindness. We can start next week, perhaps just an hour the first day, and see how it goes from there."

 

 

 

 _We'll see how it goes_ had basically been Bail's mantra from the beginning of this; that, and _you deserve better,_  a silent fact aimed at the kid who he'd been fighting for now for almost two years. When he left the library, he felt a mix between the ever-present hope he had held onto this whole time and a certain awareness that even if Maul appeared to be making progress in leaps and bounds, there would still inevitably come a reckoning.

He just didn't expect it when it actually happened, later that evening. He knew Maul was out wandering the Estate, as he was wont to do during the night hours these days, and so Bail went out to go and find him and talk about the assessment and the plan for the following week, and found Maul in probably the worst state of panic Bail had seen him in yet.

It turned into the first time he'd ever seen Maul actively use the Force, and the last time he would until roughly a decade later, under the tutoring of displaced Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi. Later, Bail wouldn't remember in any great detail how exactly it all happened -- at least those moments -- but he would remember pieces of it; he would remember the explosion of light and the sudden queasiness when his head hit the wall hard enough to stun him, as he was thrown there by some invisible power. And he would remember the black dissipating from his vision, though his ears were still ringing.

More than anything, he would remember the look of stricken horror on Maul's face as he backed up, staring at Bail and then down at his own hands, before turning and bolting away.

Under any other circumstances, Bail wouldn't have given chase, but even concussed and feeling his own blood sliding hot down the back of his neck, he knew that he needed to try to catch Maul, because there was no way that giving him space this time could be a good idea, there was no way Bail could leave Maul to dwell on this without offering reassurance. He managed to gain his feet, reeling some and stomach heaving uneasily, and used the railing on the house's walk to hold himself up.

He never managed to catch up. Instead, he watched through his swimming vision as Maul paused at the top of the Estate's tall stone fence out near the evergreens he sometimes climbed, lit by the blue moonlight, crouched like a manka cat about to spring, and threw something back onto the grounds.

And then he was gone.

Bail's heart hit his shoes. Even without going out there to see what had been thrown, he knew it was the ankle tracker that Mazi had been petitioning to have removed anyway.

He was still leaning there when the Estate's head chef came out from prepping for tomorrow's meals, going to head to her own property nearby, and gasped at the sight of him there.

 

 

 

It was only Bail's parents that managed to get him to come inside, and before long his two sisters who still lived at home were there, and Frayus was called, and somewhere in between events, he managed to explain what he could remember of what had happened, while his father held pressure on the back of his head with a towel, the other hand braced on his forehead, and as his youngest sister brought him back a glass of cold water.

When everyone else was talking anxiously over his head, Mazi sat down on a chair she had dragged over and leaned forward to look at him, tilting her head at him, her eyes filled with love and sorrow.

"Do you want us to go after him?" she asked, gently.

And some part of Bail wanted to say _yes_ , desperately _yes_ , not because he wanted any kind of retribution or because he was angry, but because the thought of Maul being out there alone without anyone to watch over him felt like a shard of ice through the heart, and because Bail hadn't spent the past near two years doing the watching over only to stop now, and worst of all, he _knew_ why Maul ran, he had caught evermore frequent glimpses of how sweet that kid really was under all of his damage, and he knew--

\--he knew that if they tracked Maul down now, as if he were a criminal, no matter their intentions, it would mean losing something that Bail only just realized he had been given.

That didn't stop his lip from quivering when he said, thickly, "No."

Or the tears that followed.

 

 

 

Frayus didn't register an opinion on letting Maul go. Mazi's word, in relation to the Estate and everyone on it, was absolute law and had always been; something she rarely invoked, she was permissive even by modern Alderaanian standards, but when she did, it was something everyone bowed to. When Bail said no, that was that. If Maul didn't come back on his own, House Organa would have to come clean sooner rather than later to the Republic justice officials who had granted them Maul's parole, and it would be a black eye for their family, but Bail didn't really care about that part, and he didn't think his mother did, either.

Bail had a moderate concussion and had been advised to rest; there was no easy way to use bacta on that thanks to physiology, at least without being hooked up to an IV or submerged into a tank, so all Bail had was a few painkillers. The cut had been easier; it wasn't very big, though he was missing a chunk of hair now and would lose some more when the gel-bandage was pulled off, but mostly all he had in his arsenal was resting until he agreed to anything more serious.

Except, Bail didn't go back to his suite and to his bed.

Instead, he went back outside after pulling a sweater on to combat the late night chill, from the breeze that wound down into their valley from the mountains they lived between, and found a spot where he could lean and watch that space of wall. His headache was still present and he wasn't perfectly steady on his feet, but--

But he couldn't really be anywhere else.

"Just for tonight," he told his mother, a plea, when she tried to nudge him to bed. "Just tonight, okay?"

She pressed her mouth into a line, but she nodded and before she turned in herself, she made him tea, put it in an insulated mug, and kissed his cheek. Bail wondered if she wouldn't end up staying awake herself; even though she and Maul had never directly interacted, Bail knew how much his mother cared, how much she had wanted to see Bail's faith rewarded.

He knew that when dawn came, it would be his mother who came out to get him and pick up the pieces of his heart to cradle in forgiving hands, until he could put them all back together again.

He didn't even really expect Maul to come back. There had been no meanness in the running, just like there had been no meanness in any of Maul's other hair-triggered self-defense measures, but there were doubtless several reasons for all of it. He was such a mystery, even to Bail, even after all of this time; what it was that had taught him to throw a swing when feeling threatened, what it was that had even landed him in that fighting ring almost five years ago, what it was that went through his head or didn't.

He was still a mystery, but Bail loved him nonetheless. And so, he waited.

 

 

 

The tea was long gone and the moon long set when the birds of summer started chirping, signalling a dawn which would creep out of the pitch blackness and chase away the stars.

(Long ago, when Bail was little, he had tried to puzzle out how the birds knew to start singing before there was any light in the sky, when all visual indicators suggested that it was still night. He came to a moment of brilliant enlightenment:  _They heard the birds in the east._ He ran to his mother with this revelation and he remembered the way she smiled, and Bail never tried to find out the correct answer to that because he didn't want to lose the magic of the one he came up with. Now, sitting there, he wondered if maybe the answer wasn't just in them having faith that the sun would rise again.)

He sat on the rail of the walk, leaning against the column, the river stones leeching the heat out of his backside. Sometimes he dozed, always aware of how sore his chest felt, a hollow and raw feeling made of equal parts loss and longing. His head was hurting a little more, and once in awhile he rubbed the tears out of his eyes with his sleeve, and he tried to come to terms with it all.

It would have never been fair to project his own expectations onto Maul. Bail wasn't going to start now, even if that meant letting him go.

He had made peace with that, if nothing else, as the light started filtering into the sky, as deep blue started rising from beyond the wall; by the time he could start to pick out more than black silhouettes again, their ghost came back.

He jumped down off of the wall, landing hard and a little rough, and Bail felt his bruised heart jump into his throat when Maul found the tracker he had thrown, picking it up.

Bail highly doubted that Maul had expected to just sneak back onto the Estate and pretend nothing had ever happened. There was a deliberation to every move he made, even if every move looked sore and scared and tired. By the time he started back for the house, leaving a dark trail in the dew-covered grass, Bail had gotten stiffly back to his own feet and went to meet him towards the end of the walk.

Maul paused briefly when he saw Bail, but then he kept walking, head down a bit, but aiming true anyway. He stopped a few paces away, and his voice was cracked when he said, "I'm sorry," and there were tears welled in his eyes when he looked up, and said, "I want to believe you--" and then he managed a plaintive, "I don't know what's wrong with me," and that was apparently more than his composure could take, because he couldn't get another breath past the tears, baring his teeth in pain and hiding behind his hands.

Bail wanted to say, _there's nothing wrong with you, you're allowed to feel hurt and confused and mixed up_ , and he wanted to say, _it's okay if you don't believe me yet,_  and he wanted to say, _I'm never going to give up on you,_ and he would. Not now, but he would.

But for now, he just wrapped his arms around Maul and ignored the brief sting when his jaw was scored a bit by the sharp point of a horn, and said, "I'm just glad you came home," and when Maul wrapped arms around him back, clutching his sweater and sobbing into his chest, he failed to swallow down more of his own tears.

They were still standing there like that when the sun came up.


	3. The Waters of Alderaan

It would only be years after -- after the watershed, after the rebuilding, after the growing and learning, after they become close, after they become lovers -- that Bail would get a true glimpse of how much effort it took Maul to come back to Estate; at what went through his mind as he had bolted, and the process by which he chose to return, and how _much_ conditioning he had to fight to do it. Maul would never go into _how_ he became conditioned to distrust everything, including his own mind and senses, let alone anyone outside of it, but he would explain enough that Bail would realize all over again how hard it had been for Maul to be in such a thick, cold fog of desolate confusion and paranoia, and appreciate all over again the amount of courage it took to turn around and grasp that one bright thread of hope that could lead him out of it.

"I didn't know what was real," Maul would say, shaking his head, and even years later he would cross his arms whenever he talked about it. "I know that sounds-- sounds crazy--"

"Not crazy," Bail would cut in, a gentle reminder, and Maul would huff at him in completely fake irritation, but he would nod for it before continuing.

"--it couldn't be real. It had to be a-- a test, or a trap, or--" A beat. "It couldn't be real, but what if it _was_?"

It would be years before he would grasp the depth of that question, but even in the moment, Bail knew what a watershed was; what it was to stand upon the top of a ridge and watch where all waters flowed, and then choose which ones to follow. When his mother stepped out and saw them, her hand went up to cover her mouth and Bail could see the way her eyes welled up in the new light; when Maul must have sensed her there, even so far up the walk, he stiffened up some and though Bail was ready to let him go, he still shushed, soothing, and there were no words he would ever be able to find to describe what he felt when Maul stayed put, brow pressed to Bail's collarbone, shivering a little from the cool night and fatigue, but accepting the offered shelter.

Only that this was what futures looked like.

 

 

 

Everything changed again, but not all at once and not easily.

The deliberation that Bail had noticed when Maul had come back didn't disappear; where before it seemed that he was in a constant state of reaction, with all of the inherent anxiety that came with living like that, now there were moments where Bail could see him stop and check himself, then make an active decision. It wasn't always a simple process, and often he would shoot a look at Bail in silent question, but Bail himself was coming leaps and bounds in reading those looks and usually offered more support than answers back. He didn't really know all of the answers, but he knew he'd be there whatever they ended up being.

The first thing that Maul asked to do late the next day was to meet with Bail's parents and thank them. And when he did, he didn't really manage to look them in the eye, and Bail could feel him having to fight not to recoil through that hand between his shoulders, but he still said, quietly, "Thank you. For-- for letting me stay here."

Both of Bail's parents looked warm and touched by it, but it was his mother that answered, "You're welcome, dear," her tone gentle without being effusive.

They said nothing more; Maul nodded back, glancing up, and then retreated back out of the master wing's den. Bail let out his own quivering breath of relief, flashed them a smile, and then followed, his chest warm with pride.

(Later, his mother caught him and said, "I'm so glad he's here, Bail," and the depth of emotion in her voice about took Bail apart; he had watched for two years as the bright, vivacious presence that she had been before Tayvor's murder had dimmed and hardened into not much better than quiet, pained dignity and duty, and even for as much as she loved her family, it had taken their broken ghost to give her someone to extend that part of her heart to again. Sometimes, he wondered if two people hadn't ended up saved by all of this.)

Whatever had unlocked in Maul's head, he was exhausted for it; he couldn't seem to sleep at night, in his suite, but he had taken to curling up out by the Stonebrook, in one of the spaces where the trees were thin and the grass grew close to the bank, during the afternoon. The Estate's landscaping and gardening crew made sure to leave a wide berth, just so as not to disturb him, and he'd doze for hours there in the long afternoon sun of the waning summer, coming back in only when it rained or when the sun was behind the mountains long enough for the air to cool.

Eventually, Bail went out with a padded sleeping mat and a pillow, making sure to scuff his feet against the ground as warning as he had always done; when Maul sat up, blinking at him drowsily, Bail couldn't quite chew down a grin at the sight of the bits of grass stuck to him. "Figured this might help," he said, crouching and holding out his offering.

Maul looked at them, confused. "I don't need anything, though."

That was another thing Bail was learning to understand about Maul; that Bail was, inadvertently, _teaching_ him: That not everything in life had to be defined on its necessity. That, too, was a slow process, but he was getting better at it. "Would it be more comfortable?" he asked, and wasn't surprised any by the blank look of incomprehension; he just waited while he watched Maul try to grapple with the concept, expression some mix between wariness and thoughtfulness.

When Maul finally nodded, it wasn't the most certain kind of nod, but he spent the last few hours of the afternoon sprawled out on that sleeping pad looking a lot more like an older teenager and a lot less like he was trying to become a pillbug wrapping around himself.

It wasn't any magical transformation; he had nightmares, doubtless more of them than Bail observed from a distance. There were times when he would be wound up and go mute again, and Bail usually just offered reassurances and didn't take it personally when Maul vanished back to his room, or occasionally out into the bank of evergreens.

And he still panicked sometimes, though Bail was finally able to figure out what some of the triggers were. Once, it was when one of Celly's suitors accidentally landed against the horn of his landspeeder while waiting for her; even though the sound was all the way from the front drive and wouldn't have even registered to Bail were he alone, Maul had more sensitive hearing and froze, wide-eyed; his fixed stare went unfocused and he was gone all the way up until he managed to gasp that he was fine.

Given that he was cringing against the wall of the house, shaking like a leaf, it was clear that he definitely wasn't fine, but the fact he said anything at all was new.

"You're not," Bail said back, softly, still back far enough to not be a threat and sitting against the walk's railing. "But that's all right, you don't have to be right now."

Another time, it was one of the kitchen helper droids crossing from the kitchen garden to the indoors; the metallic sound of its feet ticking against the walk. Once, it was the sound of silverware hitting the ground. Occasionally, Bail never figured it out, but he did notice that those panic attacks didn't last as long or go as deep; that even though it was still awful watching Maul lose his grip on the present and land back in whatever terrible thing he was remembering, he was having an easier time coming back and was a little more coherent afterwards.

And he didn't throw another swing at Bail, not even when Bail accidentally got too close stepping outside into the midst of that storm before realizing it was happening.

And, he never would.

 

 

 

Bail had held off an extra few weeks on Bizzy coming back, just to allow time for things to settle again; there was a lot of adjustment to take in, even if it was mostly Maul and Bail doing said adjusting. Between bouts of exhausted sleep, Maul was slowly and sometimes painfully working out how to even live in the world; he still asked questions, but now instead of _why am I here?_ and _what am I here for?_ the main one he asked was,  _"What do I do?"_

It was an achingly vulnerable question, and Bail wasn't even sure Maul was actually asking it of _him_ , but at least on that one, Bail had suggestions. Not answers, but-- ideas.

"What do you like doing?" he asked, one night, and then pressed his lips into a line when Maul jumped a little, probably not having expected to get any kind of response.

Maul looked back at him with those wild, bright eyes of his, striking even in the cast-off lighting from indoors. His brow furrowed some and then he dropped his gaze and picked at the cuffs of his long-sleeve shirt; Bail could see him making an effort not to rub at his wrists. "I don't know," he admitted, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "I-- I don't-- I like walking with you," he said, after a few moments; perched up on the railing to the walk, leaning against the column opposite from the one Bail was leaning on, he had Bail's heart aching more sweet than sad when he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around his shins. "And I like listening to you."

"Be careful, you'll give me a big head," Bail said, grinning; he didn't really want to be the only thing on the list of things Maul liked, but he couldn't quite resist the joke.

Maul blinked, and then answered, "But you already have a big head."

Bail tried -- tried _hard_ \-- to choke down the laugh at that, he knew it was just a straight-forward observation, but he ended up sputtering before just giving up and cracking up, laughing so hard his father came by and peered out of the window to see what was going on. By the time he wound down to giggles and got enough air to apologize, his face was aching and his ribs hurt and he had to wipe his eyes. "Sorry, I shouldn't be laughing, especially when you're probably more right than you know," he said, scrubbing at his face with both hands, not quite able to smother his grin.

Maul was watching with one arm crooked back and chin resting on it, and with what was probably the softest look Bail had ever seen on his face. "It's all right, I like that too."

Bail took that in, feeling his own expression soften. "How about hiking? I know a bunch of trails -- or used to -- and I don't have anything pressing to do next week. Want to go hiking with me one of those days?"

Maul shot a look towards the wall of the Estate; there was some anxiety back on his face, and he pulled his knees back more to his chest, but after a few moments of clearly grappling with the idea, he gave a little nod.

 _Not far, then,_ Bail thought, but he just nodded back. There were trails close by; they could start there, right on the Stonebrook.

 

 

 

Dinner with the family was a handful of steps too far ahead, but Maul no longer vanished the moment he was stuck in the same general vicinity as someone else on the Estate. He did better with the staff than the family, and even then he wasn't what anyone could call _social_ , but he was able to get a meal without waiting for the kitchen to clear out and he didn't avoid the landscapers, sometimes watching them work.

It was when Maul said, "I want to teach you to defend yourself," that Bail could hear the first hints of something like confidence, though.

"Why?" Bail asked, as they walked through the gardens, tone curious.

Maul crossed his arms, but he didn't retreat from the topic at being questioned. "So I won't be able to hurt you as easily."

Bail had only been hit twice, though admittedly both times had been significant enough to warrant a bit of worry -- he'd spent three days getting a bacta infusion during the afternoons to deal with that concussion -- but he didn't like the way Maul was painting himself as inherently dangerous, especially since he hadn't lashed out with any malicious intent. "You weren't  _trying_ to hurt me, Maul, you were defending yourself, that's not the same thing."

This was also the first real sign Bail saw of how willful Maul could be; even though his posture suggested he wanted to back down, Maul still said, "Either way, I want to teach you."

"Just self-defense?"

"Yes."

Bail chewed it over as they walked, reaching over without thought to brush a hand across Maul's back in reassurance, and then finally agreed, "Okay. We can do that. But go easy on me, I'm already a klutz and I'm almost the ripe old age of _thirty_ , I don't want to go breaking anything trying to keep up."

The incredulous, lopsided grin he got back at that, subtle as it was, made Bail so happy he was beaming himself for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

Maul did his coursework in the trees; took his datapad with his reading assignments up into the evergreens, found a bough and managed to get comfortable surrounded in the dim light and the scent of pine. The first time he lightly griped about an assignment after scaling back down, Bail was oddly, ridiculously, overwhelmingly proud. Even if he knew Maul wouldn't complain about it to Bizzy, it was the strangest kind of wonderful that Maul not only _didn't_ like something, but felt sure enough of things to say it, even if he was only saying it to Bail.

He hiked with Bail, too, no less than twice a week, first on House Organa property outside of the Estate walls, then further into the wilderness preserves. "Everything's alive here," he had said, at one point, looking through the trees, the hints of wonder coloring the words warm. "And-- bright, too." Bail had smiled at that, but then couldn't resist joking that if Maul didn't slow down, there'd be one less thing alive in these parts because Bail would collapse, and after a moment of staring at him wide-eyed and clearly working the humor over in his mind, it must have clicked because Maul ducked his head, shaking it with that crooked grin that Bail was coming to know one little flash at a time.

Before that, he sat on the walk for an entire week during the mid-morning to lunch period, between the kitchen and the garden that was being harvested, until the sound of the helper droid's feet ticking against the stone no longer made him tremble.

Most of the time, he stood with Bail, when Bail handed off the latest contract proposals to Mazi, even if he didn't speak up.

He still dozed some afternoons beside the Stonebrook, but he did it on that sleeping mat; he still had nightmares, but he started actually going to bed during the night hours, too, albeit inconsistently.

And he finally went with Bail to Frayus's office for a checkup, his first since he had come out of his depression far enough to acknowledge the world around him; he was a wreck when it was over, even though Bail knew that the doctor had been soft-spoken and relatively hands off, but he was a coherent wreck and held it together until they were back on the Estate. When he vanished out of the garage, Bail let him go; when he came back a handful of hours later, calmed back down again if rather tired, Bail just hugged on him and let that say everything there needed to be said, even if it resulted in Bail getting horn-scored again. Not that Bail cared about that.

(But the next time he went with Bail to the doctor, Maul had Frayus round the sharp tips off of his horns.)

 

 

 

Years later, Maul would hold his shoulders stiff as a Jedi tries to teach him how to actively use the Force and say, "I had to relearn _everything_ I'd ever known, Obi-Wan, and not just in the Force; to do that I had to unlearn everything that came before. Summoning something to hand seemed largely pointless in the face of it; if you're asking me to get angry enough to try--"

"No, no," Obi-Wan will interrupt, hands up in a truce, tone more or less gentle. "That's not what I'm asking, though I can see where you'd get that idea. I'm just saying that since you're not really _wired_ to work like a Jedi would-- well, then, perhaps we ought to stop pretending you can get your emotions out of the way and instead make use of them. But it needn't be anger.  It shouldn't be, for that matter."

Maul will narrow his eyes in some measure suspicion. "Then what would you suggest I use?"

"There's a reason I keep letting you dress me in that awful ski suit. What about drawing on what makes you _happy?_ "

Bail, still sore and unstable but recovering, will meet Maul's dark gold gaze over Obi-Wan's shoulder and see the force that's holding the pieces of his heart together so that they will heal, burning in the abiding love contained there.

He won't need to be able to read minds to know what that gaze says: 

_First and last, that is always you._

 

 

 

Bail had been planning this outing for awhile, though when he had started, he hadn't known what exact date it would be. He had been hoping it would be before the cold weather set in, even if he was prepared to hike a very long way in the snow if that was what it took.

But it was on that golden cusp between summer and fall, when the nights were cold enough for frost and the days were still warm, that he got word back and could make it into a reality.

"Hey, I've got a hike I wanna go on with you," he had told Maul a couple days before, just to make sure that Maul had plenty of time to prepare mentally; as much as Bail liked surprising people he loved with good things, he didn't think springing even a good thing on Maul without warning was a bright idea yet. "We'll have to be up pretty early, so make sure Bizzy knows not to come out the day after tomorrow?"

"Where do you want to go?" Maul had asked, after nodding that he would let her know; he had been working over a section of very old Alderaanian mythology that seemed to agree with him more than the modern literature course did, and when he set his datapad down, Bail noticed he was three units ahead of where he was actually supposed to be.

"That's kind of a surprise." Bail offered a sheepish grin. "Just make sure you're rested up so you can carry me, if my decrepit self can't make it."

Maul had stared at him, as he always seemed to when confronted with humor, and then actually huffed a little laugh. And when Bail had turned to go and try to make sure his schedule actually stayed clear, he heard an offhanded comment from Maul about preferring to _climb_ trees, as opposed to carrying them, and ended up laughing all the way out the door without once realizing that in three years, that kind of joke would have an entirely different connotation to it.

Now, the sunlight was cutting through the trees that were just starting to turn, banding down on them as they worked their way up lines of elevation. There weren't any blazed trails in this vast, wild area, so they were largely left to follow the ones left by game, worn in by hooves and paws; once, they managed to startle up a pair of young deer who bounded off in a rustle of underbrush, and Bail thought about that story his mother had told.

It really was a long hike, long enough that Bail actually packed for them to camp, and had made sure they had plenty to eat. Along the way they paused, had a snack; paused again for lunch, sitting on the massive, cool rocks; now, as it was nearing dinner time, Bail's datapad was buzzing against his hip letting him know that they were getting close.

He pulled it out to consult with it and adjusted his course a little bit, and within twenty minutes, they were there.

The spring seemed to bubble right out of the mountainside, before rilling its way down into the small, narrow bed it had carved for itself, babbling and chuckling and whispering its way down into its watershed and away. It seemed innocuous, but Bail could still feel his breath catch a bit at such a deceptively simple scene; he was just about to explain when Maul spoke up instead.

"The headwaters of the Stonebrook," he said, something rough and complicated and deep resonating in his voice, as he unshouldered his pack and set it up on one of the flat sandstone boulders all over this area.

"Yeah," Bail answered, at length, as Maul crouched and let the water run over his hand. He found that he wasn't the least bit shocked that Maul knew that, despite not being told; he watched for a few moments, then got his own pack off, rolling his shoulders afterwards. "I figured we could hike it all the way to the Triplehorn over the next few days, if you want; I've already got permission to cross property lines and we can re-provision on the way."

Maul nodded back, but he didn't say anything yet, watching the clear water sliding across his red and black fingers before it went to chase itself down the mountain from which it came. And Bail didn't interrupt; there was the happy second part of this trip to go into -- that Maul wouldn't have to wear that tracker anymore; despite him knowing how to take it off, once he had come back, he'd put it back on and left it there -- but for now, he was glad to give Maul a chance to sort out whatever he was feeling, not only about where they were, but what Bail thought it had to mean, too.

"This was the first thing that I knew was real here," Maul eventually said, and his voice was a little cracked when he did, enough that it pulled on Bail's heart. "You were always there, but this was the first thing that I knew was real, because it told stories to itself that I didn't know and didn't know the words to, but that I could hear anyway."

Half a world away was a river Bail had loved as a boy and would rekindle his love for in the next few years; sixty or so kilometers from this spot was the stream Tayvor Mandirly used to sit watching for hours, and it would join the Mission River, which would eventually meet the Triplehorn and mingle with the waters of the Stonebrook there before continuing on through Aldera Lake and beyond.

Somehow, the thought that the waters of Alderaan told stories to one another didn't surprise him; it seemed that they must have always done so, and always would.

He took a breath and let it out slow, then crouched down with Maul, not able to find any words at all for that, but feeling it all the way down to the very bottom of his soul.

He wondered what tales the Stonebrook would tell of the past year, as it had coaxed and reassured a ghost; what it had said as it had gone on its merry way after Maul had come back to life, murmuring to him while he slept close to the banks; what it was saying now, as it slid between Maul's fingers and told him the truth and welcomed him home.

And Bail wondered what stories were yet to come, too.

He was glad they would both be there to find out what this future was going to look like.


End file.
